Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 75450 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 377(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75450 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 377(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
Was there maybe a bit of a trauma-bond as well? I guess you could make an argument for that. But I felt confident that it went beyond that. We weren’t harping on the things we’d endured. We were talking about our pasts, our passions, our hopes for the future. We were more than the drive-by and the people who wanted us silenced and dead.
“It’s kind of nice to have someone to worry about me,” I admitted.
“To be fair, Sof worries about you too. But because you don’t let her in, she doesn’t even know what she’s supposed to worry about. So she just worries in a general way.”
He wasn’t wrong. “It seems like I’m not the only one who has been keeping things from the people around them,” I told him pointedly.
“Touché. Maybe we make a deal.”
“What kind of deal?”
“We are always honest about what we’re dealing with, so the other can worry appropriately.”
“That seems fair. Though, fair warning, I’m terrible at communicating.”
“No shit, really?” he asked, snorting.
“So you might need to drag stuff out of me.”
“I bet I know a way or two to persuade information out of you.” His fingers teased up my side.
“I think you’re probably right.”
My phone beeped, making Rune reach for it to hand to me.
“More pictures from Sof?” he asked as I unlocked it and downloaded the attachments before scooting up next to him to swipe through them.
Thanks to the stupid brace making my fingers clumsy, I accidentally toggled back to my whole library.
Before I could click one of the pictures again, though, Rune stiffened beside me, his whole body going ramrod straight.
But when I scanned my grid, I didn’t see anything scandalous. Certainly nothing worth getting all tense about.
“What’s the—” I started, only to be cut off when Rune snatched my phone from my hand.
He clicked the picture he was fixated on, making it fill up the screen, then turning it to me.
“Carmen, why the fuck are you in a picture with Vicky’s killer?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Rune
It was just supposed to be a sexy, fun, easy night after a long and, ultimately difficult, day. Lounging in bed talking, looking at pictures of Sofia and Hamster in various locations through different states.
And the process of tracking down the guys trying to kill us was meant to take days or weeks of work on the parts of Junior and the club. With a little help from us, maybe, if they made some progress.
Then, once we found the bastards, I figured it would be a quick and relatively easy process to track them down and take them out… without Carmen having to be involved in any sort of way.
One picture changed that.
Because right there, with his arm thrown around the shoulders of a smiling Carmen, both of them squinting at the sun, with a familiar little cafe in Puerto Rico… was Jon. A face I’d never forget. Even if this version of him was smiling and the one I knew had nothing but cold indifference in his eyes as he lifted a gun to a beautiful young woman’s head… then snuffed out her life. Like it was nothing. Like she was nothing.
My heart fell to the pit of my stomach just looking at the bastard’s face.
“What?” Carmen asked, brows pinching. “That’s Jack,” she said, looking over at me like I’d lost my mind. Then she said words that had my stomach twisting. “My cousin.”
Fuck.
Some part of me, to save her the heartache, wanted to look closer at the image, decide I was mistaken, and declare I was wrong.
But I wasn’t wrong.
I wasn’t wrong.
This was the man who’d mercilessly murdered a woman in front of my eyes.
You didn’t forget the face of the man who changed the course of your life.
“Baby, this is Jon. And he killed Vicky.”
I expected her to roll her eyes, to wave her hand, to tell me I was crazy.
But her lips fell open. Her eyes sank.
And I knew.
I knew she was somehow putting the pieces together as well.
“His name is Jon. We call him Jack because his father has the same name.”
I swallowed the battery acid my saliva had turned into, feeling it burn all the way down.
“Carm, is this who told you I killed Vicky?”
Her eyes were saucers.
I had my answer before she even opened her mouth.
“Yes.”
The club was right. There were questions I should have asked earlier. Things I could have known days ago.
“I… I had no reason not to trust him. I mean, he’s family. I didn’t actually know him before I went to Puerto Rico, but still… he was someone I thought I could trust.” She paused, gaze suddenly far away. “He was my tour guide. He showed me all around the island. Told me where to go, where to avoid. Took me out to dinner…”
“He knew you were there looking for answers about Vicky?”